Synopsis of Season One

A determined group of conspirators managed to drive the corrupt Count
Stefan Dodochesiv from the Barony of the Little White Hills. The Count
survived the storming of his castle and fled across the snow covered passes
to death in the winter snows or freedom in the lands of the Solderin beyond.
The agents of his downfall split into two groups; while one would go to the
court of the king and petition for a just ruler for the Barony the other
would risk death and pursue the Count through the snow and if necessary
further still until he was dead.

The pursuers made their way through the snow-filled passes to the southern
lands. There they encountered a large land, sparsely populated and wild for
many acres. They came across a farm where all the inhabitants had been
brutally massacred and from there a road leading west, parallel to a great
river. They followed it to the town of Kuzulgrod, sited on a mighty waterfall
over a great cliff. There they discovered sightings of the Count, days ahead
of them, dressed in native clothes, burning with fever and clutching a
valuable wooden box.

According to the locals Kuzulgrod was merely the outpost of the Mother of
Cities Kalkuzhan to the west. It seemed the Count was making for this city.
While descending the cliff at Kalkuzhan the group was further split by
injury. It was decided that the two friars Big and Little Alexander would go
ahead to the city and keep with the Count’s trail. The others would
journey after them when they were recovered.

The two friars discovered that Kalkuzhan was located on an island in the
mouth of the great river that flowed from the waterfall at Kuzulgrod. Passing
through the mighty bronze gates they meet with an old friend Sister Eva. Once
romantically linked with Little Alexander and a surrogate mother to the
younger Alexander she now distributed alms in Kalkuzhan a beacon of light in
a dark city motived by greed and lust for power.

Staying in Sister Eva’s small apartment the friars questioned the
gate guards and ship captains as to whether they had seen the Count pass from
the city. They were answered in the negative and then one night they met with
a captain who claimed his men had seen the Count arguing with the doorkeeper
of a rich local merchant called Bey Calan. A waiter at a nearby coffeehouse
confirmed the story and it appeared that Bey Calan might run a brothel for
the benefit of the young, beautiful and rich inhabitants of the city.

But had the Count been given shelter in Calan’s grand house or had
he been forced away to seek shelter elsewhere in the city? The friars decided
to search the caves in the sides of the island, sheltering place of the most
destitute and despairing members of the city and there they discovered a
netherworld of tunnels and ruins that lay under the city.

After exploring the tunnels for a while the pair come across a large
grotto filled with floating corpses and hordes of scavenging fish and crabs,
crossing the lip of a weir at the mouth of the grotto the friars find a large
and ancient vaulted chamber containing wall tombs, all of which have been
broken open and looted while some have been used to form yet more tunnels
heading elsewhere. Using these tunnels they find a section of well-maintained
and decorated passages that take them to haphazard collection of
“alleys” running amongst the levelled ruins of old buildings and
the foundations of the current buildings of the Temple district above
them.

After following a set of steps that have obviously been travelled recently
the pair find themselves in a set of parallel tombs, offset slightly in
height. The contents of the tomb, though robbed indicate an ancient history
with a provenance in the ancient Carthians. They decide to climb up into the
next level of tombs and keep on exploring.

In the meantime Sister Eva is concerned at the amount of time the two
friars have been away and arranges for Anatoli to enter the tunnels after
them and bring them back out if they have are lost. Anatoli is one of the
regulars at Eva’s temple and know for sleeping rough and hiding in the
tunnels beneath the city.

On a hunch he finds the cave the Alexanders used to enter the tunnels (the
passing of two Valdorians being a rare event) easily and quickly follows
their fresh trail until he catches up with them in a tomb marking the
transition from the Orthodox faith to the Amdati version of Albinism. He
introduces himself to the Alexanders and asks if they are ready to leave but
the pair insist on continuing to explore, it is clear that they are in the
tombs of one of the temples.

Meanwhile the nobleman Sedziwoj Wolkonski-Koniecpole who had been injured
in a fall and forced to recuperate in Kulzulgrod makes his own way to the
city looking to find the Alexanders and see how close they to finding the
Count. At the gates his lack of Solderin results in an easy entrance as the
bewildered guards eventually let him into the city out of amusement. However
in the courtyard beyond there is trouble when a swarm of beggars descend on
him and some try to rifle his saddlebags.